Sebastian has written about music for the Daily Telegraph, Prospect, Arts Industry and the Bulletin in Brussels. He has been a professor at the Royal College of Music and has recorded a CD of the Mozart clarinet quintet with the Maggini Quartet.
Violist Berit Cardas' smiles seemed to sum up the lightness, the exuberance of the Vertavo quartet as they tripped with grace and astonishing technical assurance through four Haydn quartets.
Kings Place's "Cello Unwrapped" series is a major, year-long celebration of the instrument. It consists of a no fewer than 51 events spread throughout the year, with everything from films to sessions on buying – and even making – instruments.
Bach, Biber, St. John's Smith Square. Clever juxtapositions, and they worked. The programmer of this concert - by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Solists under Sir John Eliot Gardiner - had a neat thought, to place Bach's six Motets (BWV 225-230) into the former church in SW1. The building and the motets date from the same decade, the 1720's.
Neither Prokofiev nor Dutilleux is a exactly a failsafe at the box office, and the combination of both - and a rainy afternoon - left quite a few seats unclaimed at last night's Prom by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Valery Gergiev.Which was a shame.
Who has the power, the authority to fix the moment when a major public event can start? In broadcast events, such as the Proms, where all of the concerts are broadcast on Radio 3 and many are televised, the bigger, virtual audience puts the media in the driving seat. The radio or TV producer holds sway - up to the moment when the conductor steps out into the hall.
Michael Ierace's piano recital last night in Linton, Cambridgeshire was revelatory. That adjective is perhaps devalued through overuse, but this young Australian pianist's playing does indeeed reveal the strong, the beautiful, and the unexpected in music one might believe one already knows.
There are the knowns. The things, as Rumsfeld would have it, that we know that we know. Like the way the Aurora orchestra can bring sheer youthful exuberance to a fast piece like the G Major presto finale to the symphony No.27 which ended the first half of last night's all-Mozart concert at Kings Place. Aurora don't just survive at these breakneck tempi, they absolutely thrive on them.
The programme had been changed. No Montsalvatge, but this gave space for a lovely performance of Grieg's varied and characterful Haugtussa (Maid of the Mountain) cycle. Both performers had clearly worked at it intently, and took us with great authority through its twists and turns. The Larsson songs must be some of the strangest lyrics ever set.
Let’s talk about love. Magdalena Kožená’s ‘Lettere Amorose' will be touring Europe from now until just after Valentine’s Day. Yes, love, because anyone imagining that the subject matter of these songs from the early seventeenth century will be sweetness or light (or for that matter chocolates or lingerie) will be severely disappointed.Handle with care.
How tempting it can be for the aficionado of German Lieder to stay at home and never to go to concerts. He (yes, it is normally a he rather than a she) can retreat into his LP and CD collection, and convince himself that the great recordings of a Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau or an Elisabeth Schwarzkopf cannot be surpassed.
Recital of songs/ arias by Britten/ Bellini/ Donizetti/ Schubert/ DebussyLouise Kemeny brings a level of intellect and thoughtfulness to sung texts which is probably unique among young singers. She has to her name both a Masters degree in renaissance literature, and a scholarly article about newly-installed Oxford Poetry Professor Geoffrey Hill.
The Holywell Music Room in Oxford, with its bright and reverberant sound, was purpose-built as a concert hall, and opened in 1748. To hear four experienced and top-class singers last night, all of whom were able to work the specifics of this unique and historic room, to sing to it and use it as their instrument, was sheer joy.
In a recent interview, BBC Radio 3 Controller Roger Wright was asked "What music would you want played at your funeral?" His reply: "Spanish guitar music, because I wouldn’t be there to hear it. If you ask my colleagues they’d say Spanish guitar music is one of my blind spots."Full marks to Wright for laying his cards on the table, perhaps.
